The rosin is used to generally give the bow "bite" when being played (being a "strathspey" player, i like my bite!!) and i find it just trial and error on how much rosin to use. I was once told to keep looking at the hairs.. if they got rather white, you have enough on... but then it started to sound quite odd and very sticky. I have had a lot of experience through watching my tutor, Paul Anderson, when he's getting ready to play the fiddle. He always flicks the bow down, and you can see the excess rosin coming off the hair. I do this also, and the sound is much better.

When it comes to my strings, I only clean them with a clean duster every so often.. usually once a week (depending on how much I'm playing!) I'm odd about my fiddle rituals hahaha.

Aggy